Gurus, yogi’s, monks…contemplating the universe and life's deep meanings and questions without a dialogue. Thats not philosophy? What is it then? — DingoJones

Mysticism.

Descarte wasnt doing philosophy in his solitary meditations? When you say “inherent”, wouldnt that make it a pre requisite for philosophy? So what was Decarte doing in his cave, if not some kind of philosophy? — DingoJones

You think Descartes lived in a cave? He corresponded with the greatest minds out there. I agree with Banno that philosophy is social. All those ruminations of Descartes drinking his cognac in front of the fireplace starting to doubt stuff is just a literary device...

Then:
1. Read novels and watch movies that ask philosophical questions. Not explicitly, that's boring but implicitly. Stuff like The Matrix, Sophie's World, Memento, Dune. Next up is Borges, Ursula Le Guin, Kafka, Catch 22... In any case, literature first.
2. Read a philosophy text and attempt to understand it, but not from a primary source, a text about the history of philosophy or Phil of Science, of language, political phil. anything really but not primary.
3. Read a primary source, something like Descartes, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Habermas, Rawls...
4. Read a different philosophy text, and attempt to understand it.
5. Compare and contrast the two texts. If able write some things down to attempt to solidify your thoughts. Share it with anyone interested! Repeat 3 and 4 a couple of times. Go to Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Popper, Gadamer or some of those wildly obscure analytics ;)
6. Find a mentor, a 'demon' who you can spar with but is above your level
7. Read more, different texts, compare and contrast but most of all discuss.
8. Dispute with your mentor, question him or her. Find your own inspiration.
9. become a mentor for someone else.
10. Repeat, if desired, or add a rule. (Purposefully ambiguous)[/quote]

So….it’s fine to disbelieve in Kantian transcendental logic, which presupposes a fair understanding of what it is, but how is Hegel’s logic any less transcendental?

Heh. You're asking the wrong person. Tobias would be a much more sympathetic voice if he's willing to pipe up on Hegel.

Hegel is certainly a German Idealist. — Moliere

I have not read all of the thread, actually only this question because of Moliere's mention. I do not know if it is relevant and if not just ignore the spam. There is a big difference between Kant and Hegel though. Kant considers that the world we see is a world shaped by our mind in the sense that the mind holds the categories by which we mould the manifold intuitions granted by sensibility. We do get these intuitions from somewhere though, even though we have no access to it. This 'noumenal world' remains hidden to us, it is the thing in itself.

Hegel on the other hand is an absolute idealist, meaning that there is no 'thing in itself', that is itself a contradictory idea. There is nothing laying 'behind' our sensibility and the distinction sensibility and understanding cannot be made. Instead the world as it is necessarily confirms to the world as we understand it. The understanding is what is the world (The rational is the real). That is oftentimes read as something very exalted or esoteric, but I think it means nothing less than that something can be a certain something at all is because the way we understand, perceive, handle, interact with that certain something. Saying for instance that a door knob is not really really a doorknob, but instead a bundle of intuitions from some noumenal world, is nonsense for Hegel. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. There are just no god given doorknobs, they are a product of our interaction with the world. That is not a transcendental but an immanent logic.

I can imagine a better analogy with a relationship to the perpetrator's belief, not merely what he said in an operational sense. Consider someone who sells a medicine that is actually is a chemical that makes people sick. He is accused of fraud and tried in court. Evidence is presented that he was given data, repeatedly, demonstrating that the medicine didn't make people better but made them sick. Yet he kept selling it and advertising it as a medicinal cure. Those who worked for him and demonstrated this were fired or resigned. He sought out people to work for him who would tell him what he wanted to hear about how the medicine worked. Meanwhile, more and more people got sick from his medicine as he got wealthy from selling it. His defense in court is that he "really believed" it was medicine, and so he wasn't lying he was simply exercising his free speech by advertising what he believed was true.

It depends on the specific crime, but I think in common law legalese this would fall under 'knowledge' or 'recklessness', a category of crime just below 'intent' but above negligence. It is reckless to disregard the evidence presented and if any reasonable person should have known that the medicine would cause illness it may be 'knowledge', for some crimes a higher form of intent then recklessness. Common law doctrine on intent and on justifications and excuses is not very precise and not uniform unfortunately.

A Universal is the Idea, which is Concept, which is Absolute by way of Notion. — Gregory

The absolute cannot be simply universal because that would leave particulars as somehow unreal. It goes against the grain of the dialectic. In the logic the idea becomes more and more concrete, while a universal without concretization remains abstract. Also I remember his discussions about sugar cubes from the 'Pheno' and how both taking a nominalist view of a sugar cube as an essence misses the point as well as the view of a sugar cube as a collection of universal properties.

I think statements like: "The world is universals and we are idea" are quite meaningless. I am obviously not the idea, only perhaps some sort of instantiation or I partake in it, or whatever. I tend to read Hegel far less metaphysically thick as I just think that makes matters too obscure. Hegel's point is I think much more simple: through the history of philosophy, culminating in Spinozist, Kantian and Hegelian thought, we have come to see the development of thought as a process in which is enriches itself, but always also returns from where it came, a consideration of what is most abstract and general. That is still a bold statement but at least loses all the exalted religious metaphorism. By reading him as such, it is also easier to place him in the history of philosophy. He 'historicized' thought and made it possible to think about the way we think historically.

"But what we have here is the free act of thinking putting itself at the standpoint where it is for its own self, producing its own object for itself thereby, and giving it to itself." Spinoza, as for as I know, never said we were God. So my question on this thread is how we can know whether we are finite or infinite and what this means. — Gregory

I think throughout your post you equate spirit with God. I think that is incorrect. God, (or religion) as far as I know in Hegel, is thought in the form of its presentation (Vorstelliung). God is thought posited as something outside of us, thought not grasping itself, but its image. Spirit is thought and this thought does not arise wily nilly. Thought, in spirit, captures its own history. It follows its own trail so to speak and understand itself as something with a trail and with turns and twists in its history. The history of spirit, which is actually none other than spirit, is the realization of thought for itself. Essentially it reaches past 'God', because it needs no representation outside of itself when it has spirit, i.e., itself.

We are not 'God', but we realize we have created him, he is a thought determination. In essence Hegel already proclaims the death of God much more dramatized by Nietzsche.

Now the absolute, something that spirits culminates in, is, I think, nothing else than the here and now. The here and now that thought always tries to comprehend and put in a process in history. The now is immediately taken up by thought and translated as a moment in a chain. For me for instance the 'now' is in the post I am not typing, the touch of my fingers on the key board, the exact sensation of contemplating the now, while writing. I put this 'now' immediately within the story of Tobias on this forum, of this forum in general, of its place in philosophical literature and so on. In that sense the now is infinite, your life is a history of infinite 'nows', passing by too quickly to comprehend, nothing really and still... it is always now, the now is inescapable and infinite until thought itself disappears. Is that possible? Well ... if thought is there than it is not dead and if it is dead there is no thought to consider its demise, see Epicurus. Likewise, thought, for better or for worse, is the infiinite, the measure of all things and all there is.

Thanks Banno, that is really nice to read :) and like Ciceronianus, I will mention that I also really appreciate yours.

I have been gone a bit these days, a lot of work...

Yes. In large populations, that can't be helped. In small ones, each person can be considered individually, as can each situation. But even in a systemic procedural, the prosecutor has a degree of autonomy in considering each case on its merits and some flexibility is accorded to the jury in its deliberations and to the judge in sentencing. In a very large, unwieldy, badly designed and corruptible justice system, people of good will can still apply the law more fairly than people with axes to grind. — Vera Mont

Yeah, but what is the point? There is indeed flexibility, which creates a tension with legal certainty. That is why a ' perfect' justice system is at least in practice unreachable. Legal principles sometimes contradict one another. Of course everything can be helped by creating a rule of exception in each individual case, but that renders law rather moot. It is actually a perennial tension in any legal system, you ideally want to be able to make tailor made decisions, but you also want a code of law that provides for general guidelines of conduct in broad terms.

No, and that can be helped. As immigrants need to take a fitness test for citizenship, so could all prospective voters. Unfortunately, that, too, is corruptible. Of course, civics should be a standard subject in school anyway. — Vera Mont

No idea if that would solve anything, that is an empirical question. But giving everyone exams before allowing a certain competence is highly inefficient. That is the tension I highlight between fairness and efficiency. Fairness is not the only interest that the law upholds.

That's nothing to do with meritocracy or equality under the law. — Vera Mont

Yes it does. The law might even sanction differential treatment, for instance in cases of positive action. As again, fairness in individual cases is not law's only concern. Justice on a collective level may not be in line with fairness on an individual level.

As stated earlier, I don't think punishment is the correct answer at all. I'm in favour of putting a lot more effort into preventing the causes and occasions of crime before damage is done. — Vera Mont

They are not mutually exclusive, but most importantly you dodge the question. You held that equal treatment according to a certain category is What justice and fairness meant.

Justice and fairness require that persons be classified into groups and judged according to a uniform standard for each group. A child, or adult with the mental capacity of a child, would be judged according one set of criteria; fully competent adults by a stricter one; the mentally ill, differently again. — Vera Mont

I challenged you with a thought experiment that shows that more is needed than just equal treatment. That still stands. As for your preference to prevent crime, there is a limit at which prevention becomes itself an injustice. Sure we can prevent lot of crime when we institute a police state subjecting everyone one to invasive monitoring. That would be a huge violation of the right to privacy though and therefore illegal.

So yes we blunder about, but law is about blundering about according to the best justifications we have for our blunders. It does need clear headed reasoning though. It is not 'anything goes'. That is why philosophy of law is a mature philosophical subject.

Justice and fairness require that persons be classified into groups and judged according to a uniform standard for each group. A child, or adult with the mental capacity of a child, would be judged according one set of criteria; fully competent adults by a stricter one; the mentally ill, differently again.

It doesn't require that people within a legal category be equal in any other way; only that they be treated the same under the law: accorded the same rights and burdened by the same degree of responsibility for their actions - which also mean, being tried by the same legal process, by the same rules of evidence, and given the same amount of leeway for mitigating circumstances if they're found guilty. — Vera Mont

Yes, but there is always some kind of arbitrariness in group classification. Many 17 year olds are very capable of casting votes, many 19 year olds are not. Is it than fair that those 17 yos cannot vote? You seem to conflate justice, fairness and law. It might very efficient to make those crude categorizations, because it saves us time. We do not need to assess competence in every given case. However, whether it is fair or just in all cases remains to be seen. Even people in the same legal category get treated in different ways. You have two people, A and B, who committed a crime for instance. The same kind of crime, not a big one, a rather mediocre one, the same criminal circumstances, the same personal circumstances etc. The only difference being that in case A evidence was very easy to procure, in case B it turned out to e very difficult. The prosecutor may prosecute A and dismiss B. Here concerns of time get in the way of justice. It is in theory possible to treat everyone equally, but practically it is not for two reasons: first we do not know with certainty where to draw the line of our legal categories and B there are societal reasons that hold us back from going all the way to assure equal treatment.

That said, if the core of your argument is that law at the very minimum, to be considered a system of law, needs to at least try to treat people equally, then I agree. Equal treatment means at least providing the same treatment to people within the same legal category as much as possible, however the question is, what are the reasons to make distinctions to begin with. Here I think more is needed than just a procedural guarantee of equal treatment. I will try to illustrate:

Say we indeed make classifications between children adults and the mentally handicapped and what not. We have these three categorizations. When a crime is committed, say murder, we punish the children least severe. They have not yet reached a level in which they can make choices and they can still be corrected into doing the right thing so a light punishment is preferred and laid down in law. Next come the adults. They have their full mental faculties and they can be corrected, since they understand the nature of punishment. They are punished harsher then children because we assume they made their choice more deliberately. The mentally handicaped are punished most severely. Their act is not an act of choice, but therefore they are all the more dangerous. Apparently their mental illness makes them violent and not in control of their actions. Moreover there is no reason to assume the sentence will have the corrective effect. Therefore they should be punished most severely. Would you think that criminal law is fair or just? People are treated the equally according to their legal category after all...

I think you would not accept this and rightly so, but it presents us with a problem. If, as you and I agree, justice is about equality, it cannot just be a procedural requirement, but it has a material component. I think next to equality there is another fundament and that is giving account, recognizing each other as equals in that the other is a meaningful protagonist in a debate or argument. Law is the historical prectice or arguing again again and again and through these arguments it is historically edified.

You would think this should be obvious, but it isn't, even to some lawyers. O.W. Holmes, Jr. famously noted that we have courts of law, not courts of justice. — Ciceronianus

:100: Indeed although I remember you being a bit more of a positivist then I was. I remember rehashing the Hart Dworkin debate here with you. All in all though we have quite a broad measure of agreement. :grin:

In this thread I will aim to distill in this broad topic of what constitutes justice, its basic operation in society, implications and its deliverance by laws.

1. Is Justice part of Natural Law (John Locke), Divine Command, Social Contract, or Utilitarian Agreement (John Stuart Mill) or combination of all four of these ?

2. Is justice karmic in nature or does injustice highlight a discrepancy in man made laws?

3. How should retribution be applied through court of law in secular society for punishable crimes such as murder? Would capital punishment be fitting for the most serious of crimes? (Genocide, serial killers etc)

The above principles are the main points for which most justice systems are based upon including international courts of law with the added ambiguity of remaining neutral in regards to the sovereignty and claims of state actors.

In the eyes of the philosopher is the existence of a perfect justice system possible or are all such systems unable to provide the deliverance of perfect justice either because of technicalities or other factors? — invicta

Difficult questions and hard to answer without assuming some sort of apriori definition of justice. Justice would, in some sort of Kantian vein be the capability of distinguishing between right and wrong. I reckon it is a category of thought, that is, an intrinsic part of what 'being in the world' entails. We add a 'coloring' of right or wrong to the world we perceive. Now if justice is a capability it does not as yet tell us what to consider right or wrong. That exact determinitation is I think a product of history. However, that does not make it relative. Justice, at the very minimum, has to do with equal treatment. If person A gets praised for deed X, person B will expect to be praised for a similar deed. Unequal treatment violates our sense of justice, a sense that we all have, because it is a category of thought. (If you accept this assumption, as I do).

That means, at its minimum, it is bound up with natural law, but this minimum is itself not saying so much as it does not ascertain whether deed X deserves praise or condemnation, only that if deed X is praised both A and B deserve praise. However, if we also accept that equality is a minimum standard, then justice implies some sort of capability to recognize others as equals, that is to say, to overcome a certain strangeness in the other. That allows us also to ask the other for reasons regarding his or her conduct. Because we see the other as equals and because justice entails equal treatment we ask the one who is judged to give an account of the reasons for the action. Is it a reason we find reasonable, i.e. recognizable for ourselves as just, being in a position of equality, then we will treat the other lik we want to be treated, that is, not inflict pain and suffering.

The infliction of pain and suffering as prima facie unjust is a product of equality as well. Equality and recognition means we can relate to others and feel the same pain. We can therefore ascertain that most probably acts that produce pain and suffering are unjust. Probably, because of the same principle of recognition we can also deduce that in situations in which one might expect oneself to commit pain and suffering, say in self defense, we can also estimate others to react in similar fashion. Likewise, many people see gross harm done by someone as worthy of harm caused in retribution. It might be possible to overcome that intuition, but I am not sure.

Therefore, justice does not equate with a system of law. There can be different interpretations of deeds, and these interpretation may be historically grown. However, a bedrock of justice may be deduced, at least in the form of the negative. When we see unequal treatment, we perceive it as unjust, unless the actor provides a reasonable explanation for his or her conduct. What does reasons are eventually form the code of laws, after having been written down, rewritten, and shaped over time.

The above allows us some answer to the questions posed, but not much as some of these are unanswerable and some bound up with the law and tradition of the land.

As for question 1. The bedrock of justice resides in natural law in as far as the principle of equality goes, but that is far from informative. The outcome of proceedings reside in the law of the land, a law that will try (if the legislator is benevolent) to approximate the ideal of equal treatment.

2: I do not know what is meant. Karmic in nature... maybe but in as far as justice is aimed at equal treatment so if someone is wronged the person is compensated because we feel he has suffered unequal treatment. Justice of course can also be an ideal. IF someone says: "this is unjust", he in fact says: "people are not being treated as equals!" but whether that is true entirely depends on motivation and reason giving.

3 I think the death penalty violates the idea of equal treatment or at least of recognition. It tells someone he or she is completely alien, not worthy to be considered and therefore it is allowed to put him or her to death. I am not sure though if that is not the outcome of the trajectory of European history in which I have been trained and brought up.

Treating everyone as equals is not possible, over disagreements of what equal means in such respect. Even if that difficulty could be overcome, it might not be socially efficient to do so and sometimes efficiency concerns trump concerns of justice.

In that sense then there exist in society nuanced forms of unfairness such as unmeritocratic achievements when it comes to job access or a good environment to live in. — invicta

Sometimes justice even gets mixed up with efficiency. A meritocratic system may well be efficient, but why does it also entail equal treatment to reward some people who are talented more than others? I am not saying meritocracy is unjust, just that historical reasons play a part in our assessment of justice. It is an illustration to make my point that justice is a category of thought, that at its core lays the principle of equality, but that the concrete stipulations of what is just and unjust are historically grown.

Insofar as "Hegel may have been trying to update Spinoza", I think he reconceptualizes one of Spinoza's infinite modes ("the world") as a 'meta-historicizing teleology' according to his own idealist dialectic ("Geist"). — plaque flag

Well, I am not 180 but I can take a stab at it. One of the critiques of Hegel is that he totalizes. For Hegel things move. He considers the 'movement of the concept' in the 'Logik', the coming to be of the modern state the the philosophy of right, the appearance of the spirit in the Phenomenology. During this movement described, the concept, spirit, the state acquire higher levels of self awareness and self articulation. Until with Hegel himself spirit manages something it did not manage before, namely its self awareness and therefore its identity as self thinking substance. Substance has managed to articulate itself as thinking being through taking into account its historicity in the sense of the many articulations it had to go through to reach that point.

If true that would be a real feat. His thought would in one go solve Descartes problem of duality between res extensa and res cogitans. Within the world thinking is at work. What we determine as duality is such because it is determined so by thought. The appearance of those dualisms is historical and also solved historically by pointing to their historical origins. They are unmasked, not as absolute dychotomies, but as dichotomies produced by our antinomical way of thinking. We think in dualisms, but also in their overcoming.

Not only would he have solved Descartes' problem, he would also solve the tensions between two of the greatest influences of his time, Kant and Spinoza. While for Kant the thing in itself (the world as it is) remains forever unreachable and separated from thought it is there. Relegated though to a position of mere intuition as matter. It is thought that forms it and makes a world out of it, but forever knowing that pure knowledge is out of reach. For Spinoza the world, is as 180 put it, one of the infinite modes. His great achievement in Hegel's eyes is the identification of substance and world. The realization that substance is absolute, there is nothing outside of it, there is no God that makes it work, it is all one thing. But Spinoza's world is blind, an infinite without rhyme or reason, in which we cannot be at home. Self consciousness has no place in Spinoza, as it also has no place in Deleuze or Spinoza's materialist followers. It follows that we are a stranger in a strange land.

Hegel solves it by stating, we cannot think substance other than as subject, as something with a history, a reason, a rationality attached to it necessarily that same as hours. The identity of thinking and being. The same as with Descartes. There is no res cogitans and res extensa, they are the same. Hegel's name for it is spirit.

One can see why this is totalizing. A movement culminating in the realization that there is nothing outside of the thinking historical subject whose history seems to have a rational unfolding. An unfolding even culminating in Hegel himself, so what bigger hybris might there be? Some point to Hegel to proclaim the end of history, how much more totalizing and teleological does it become?

I think this reading is too unnuanced though, at least in regard to the Hegel that wrote the Pheno and the Logik. Inside his thought is also the principle that blows up this picture, an ironic image. The phenomenology of spirit is completed in the realization that being is historical, aka 'being is time' as put by later thinkers and that is a momentous insight, but it is not over yet. Thinking progresses for Hegel by the negation, so also by the negation, or at least the seeming negation of his own thought. The chapter on absolute knowledge in the Pheno is short, short and anti climatic. What is absolute knowledge other than the knowledge that thought moves and produces deeper more refined articulations in which the older axioms are rejected? Absolute knowledge is the knowledge that one should not asbolutize because the moment that happens the thesis becomes subverted, what moves becomes dogma, dogma for its rigidity is antithetical to thought.

So yes, one can read him teleologically @plaque flag, but I think his thought is much more enriching and fruitful for the thinkers we are in our time when we do not. Than we learn something about the features of thought, an insight we may take with us, a ladder to climb and to throw away after we climbed it.

I take this is a direct reference to Spinoza’s God. Hegel thinks it shocked the age not because, as is commonly assumed, threatening the status of God as distinct and separate, but because it threatens the status of man as distinct in his self-consciousness. — Fooloso4

From my post above I think it follows that I hold that it is not about man as much as that Spinoza threatens self consciousness in general. There is no knowledge, also no slef knowledge possible in an infinite word permeated by God. It is all a thousand plateaus and nothing up or down. A rhizome without rhyme or reason to read Spinoza anachronistically.

I blame 180 proof, Hegel and red wine for this post...

It starts by introducing the idea that philosophy deals with opposites and then resolves those oppositions in various ways. Monism collapses the opposites into one another, dualism maintains them. Hegel's method is one of triads. — Toby Determined

Yes, maybe. Triads in the sense that a waltz moves in triads, the last step is never final, but part of the same movement. (Hegel talks of the movement of the concept). It is not as much thesis - antithesis - synthesis as it is often described. More like position, negation and then negation of the negation. This movement can be seen in many things, including religious experience. In Christianity, God was negated when he became men, he showed himself as non-god, but by rising from the dead he negated this non-god and became God, but now not ineffable, paving the way for a human god. (And then perhaps also its demise as the dance progresses further).


[quote="Toby Determined;d14036"I had a thought while reading this. Which is that perhaps Hegel's approach is to overcome opposition without losing the vitality of opposition. It would be contrary to the critical method to allow oppositions to stand without being overcome but the life of Hegel's system comes from the power of the negative so some element of opposition must remain.[/quote]

Yes it does. Concepts evolve and unfold into more complex (and concrete!) ones. They are never stable though. Even the concreter ones, such as 'here' and 'now' obtain their meaning from context. Concepts take their meaning from a web of concepts, which themselves keep engendering oppositions so they keep unfolding and changing. Most controversial I think, is that I do believe Hegel considered this movement to have a certain direction, namely towards freedom and self understanding, but I could be wrong.

Compare with the quote from the Phenomenology "The life of God and divine intelligence, then, can, if we like, be spoken of as love disporting with itself; but this idea falls into edification, and even sinks into insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative." — Toby Determined

As it stands I cannot make heads or tails of it. Would you mind providing the section from which it is taken? I can then look it up, read the context and read the German, which for me might be more understandable than the English.

Philosophy struggles to define its own field and methodology. This presupposes that the model of other disciplines, like mathematics and science. But that model doesn't necessarily apply There is a version of the history of philosophy that identifies it as the chaotic starting-point of all other disciplines, which have spun off from it as they have developed through the chaotic discussions of philosophers.

Philosophy is not unlike mathematics or science in some ways. But it is also like disciplines such as Literature or History, and like them, a small number of texts function as canonical. These texts open the field of philosophical discussion and show what it is like; they also provide common reference points for discussion as well as a mine of philosophical mistakes - and since there are so few philosophical successes, the mistakes are all the help we are going to get. I have even heard it said that in philosophy, getting it right is less important than being wrong in interesting ways. — Ludwig V

Can we not approach the subject of the value of philosophy in a different way than done usually in the forum? Usually the question asked is what philosophy is. Then discussions degenerate into some defense of philosophy's claims against some objecting that philosophy has made so little progress in comparison to science. The question then turns to whether philosophy should adopt some sort of scientific method or abandoned altogether. What if we just accept that philosophy is as philosophy does, that its method is what defines it? Just entertain the thought and accept for a moment that philosophy is actually its method. That browsing the ancient texts up to the new ones and that picking apart the arguments made and retracing the lines of thought is philosophy and that it is immutable.

What then can we expect from philosophy? If approached in this way we can see affinities with law, with history and theology. Its method is scholastic. It takes concepts to their extremes, using conventional points of view in various hypothetical situations and tests their limits. it uncovers assumptions we have to make when settling disputes about truth, beauty, justice and what not. When we consider its method immutable we see that it is not an empirical science and will never be. It therefore cannot yield any observable empirical truths about the world. What it can do is examine the concepts we use to think about the world. It can show us their relations, their mutual support or their antinomies. Philosophy then, is thinking about thinking, because the concepts we use to examine the concepts are the very same concepts themselves. It is a circular activity of reflection.

What is the worth of such an activity? The answer to that question depends on whether one holds on to the identity of thinking and being. i.e. the proposition that all that is, must be able to be thought and that being thought entails in any case the potential to be. If one holds on to that notion, the conceptual world is the same as the material one and by conceptual analysis philosophy explores the world as it is. The empirical sciences are simply the other eye which we use to look at the world. I would call this the idealistic position.

If one does not accept the assumption the role of philosophy is much more limited. Philosophy simply cures us for our bewitchment by language and works tirelessly to clear the debris of our thinking. The material world though is broader and always escapes our thinking about it. The more we discover the material world, the richer our concepts become. I would refer to that as the materialistic position.

I think both approaches may well be viable. I think it is illusory though to want something from philosophy that it cannot provide, empirical knowledge of the world. That claim is significant. For instance. Philosophy may teach us how we use the concept of justice, but cannot provide us with empirical knowledge of whether an act is just or not, not in the idealistic conception of in the materialist one. The idealist would maybe hold that justice exists and that some acts indeed are just and unjust. A materialist would have to either fold on the question or translate justice to some sort of material term like benefit. Such an excercise, here undertaken in a very ramshackle and shorthand way about justice, does reveal something though. It reveals the origins of our commitments and ay explain different usages of the term and therefore also the miscommunications surrounding it.

That is what scholastic science may do, retrace the history of our thoughts and our arguments. The exact value you attach to such an activity rests on your commitments, but it can only clarify itself and noting else. If that is enough for you, by all means do philosophy. If not, go ahead and do research in the laboratory or society at large and become a scientist.

Consciousness
Mental imagery/mental representations/thought
Qualia particularly pain
Infinities particularly the infinite past
The nature of meaning/rationality/intelligibility — Andrew4Handel

Mine are:
jails
Merry go rounds
My hand writing at the age of six
nipples
That person at the party who always behaves as if you have been best of friends for a long time.

This list is satire of course, though all of these also puzzle me in some respect or other. That is the point. Things aren't puzzles in themselves. They are puzzles in certain contexts. They become apparent in certain constellations and appear puzzling. The way we question creates the puzzle. What philosophy does, at least according to me, is unpack the questions we ask and reflect on why we have come to ask them, with what motive and how our asking reveals the assumptions we hold about the world.

IIRC, the last major change was over fifteen years ago – a radical shift in my thinking about and comprehension of metaphysics (thanks again, Tobias) — 180 Proof

:cool:

Oh, shut up. — frank

I guess you do score extra points for being both concise and to the point :rofl:

He was one of those Gassadini1 guys. — Shawn

Gassendi1 his name was. He was a prick but I learned a lot from him. He really added argumentative quality to the forum as well as knowledge of hard nosed analytical philosophy, something that the forum lacks nowadays.

And it is. It reflects badly on those who participate. — T Clark

Agreed. A banning is never nice and no one likes to be ostracized. It is sad for the person to whom it happened Being gleeful about a decision which is needed perhaps, but sad anyway is not very nice. He is not in the position to defend himself as well.

to make sure our delicate sensibilities don’t blind us to whatever substantive contributions are intertwined with a nasty delivery. — Joshs

Indeed. When I interacted with Bart, which wasn't very often, he puzzled me because I did see him make some points which made me think. He was unpleasant to me sometimes as well though and I found it odd. Why would he? But then again, why would I care? The forum is a lot like life and I do not think we should be too squeamish about posters who sometimes debate in a harsher form. Sometimes attitudes cross the line, but sometimes we might also ask posters to develop a thicker skin and not take every incivility too sensitively.

How does one realise their autonomy?

They can't choose their genes, their parents, their country of birth, their sex and so on on.
A lot of theorists no longer believe in free will. How are autonomy and the belief in no free will compatible? — Andrew4Handel

One realizes ones autonomy within a framework that allows you to realize it. Parents that constantly belittle a child and raise it to become an insecure adult unable to make any decisions by itself compromise the child's autonomy. So does a state that prescribes you how to live your life.

Whether the will is really really really free or not does not matter in this regard. Choices appear before us. When I asked how I want my steak I cannot just say 'well, it is predetermined anyway how I want it, have a go at it', no, I need to make a choice. I am happy with that, I can say 'red', or 'well done' or 'a point'. When the owner tells me 'bro you get your stake well-done, no excptions', then I do not have that choice and I feel positively peeved. Notice how free will does not matter one bit, but autonomy does.

I don't think that necessity to get a job or to work/strive to avoid starving is autonomy but brute necessity. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, it is. So? That is why many advanced states are welfare states. It means people have a fall back option and will not be exploited. However I fail to see the connection to the matter at hand.

If you need someone to assist and legalise your suicide that does not indicate autonomy either. — Andrew4Handel

Why not? It simply means I need help realizing my choice. If I choose to relocate, I need someone to assist me too. That does not mean that my decision to relocate is not made autonomously.

At best committing suicide by your own hand is autonomy but not involving others and enforcing legislation that effects others. — Andrew4Handel

Look, there you go again. We have legislated against assisted suicide. That legislation is enforced. Allowing assisted suicide comes down to non-enforcement of the penal code. Again you seem to think that disallowing it is somehow the natural state of affairs, but it is not. It is a product of regulatory activity. Again, you have the odd idea that autonomy means doing everything yourself. Autonomy relates to choice, not to having all the resources to realize them without help of others.

This topic can also be linked to the topic of personal identity which I made a thread about as well and who is it that persists over time. — Andrew4Handel

Yes it can possibly be, but why would we, eh? Let's not muddle the subject.

If, as I mentioned earlier, you are put in a coma before dying naturally does that person in a coma have interests? — Andrew4Handel

Possibly, but he does not have the capacity to articulate them. In such cases we grant guardianship to someone else.

Peoples beliefs and identities change through time and this applies to peoples suicidality and value towards life. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, people change, so? That does not imply we have to force them to be alive against their will, because we feel there may be an off chance that a chronically suffering patient might have a miraculous recovery. The point of euthanasia laws is that they allow assisted suicide under certain conditions. In the Netherlands one is that the patient has to be suffering chronically. Again, doctors do not terminate life based on a whim. At last they are not allowed to do so.

You can only safely stay out at night because of a social contract and a police service. — Andrew4Handel

Says you... there are a lot more theories about how society functions besides the social contract. Actually, it is rather unlikely that a police force exists because we have sat down and signed a social contract bringing it into existence.

Some people are attacked when walking at night so this doesn't prove you have an autonomy that is not provided or dependent by social structures. — Andrew4Handel

Confusing principle and practice again. Our autonomy is safeguarded by social structures, it is no invention of them. In fact many of those social structures are there because we feel we are autonomous beings.

I think the theory of social autonomy leads to antinatalism and defeats itself because autonomy is not possible due to the nature of procreation and fundamental lack of consent. — Andrew4Handel

We are not autonomous beings before we are born, we are when we are born and enter into life. Of course, vulnerable as we are, we are cradled within the family, society, a bedrock of rules etc, but with the purpose of becoming individuals, people realizing their autonomy. You might think whatever you want, however the idea that antinatalism somehow lays waste to autonomy as a philosophical concept is not very current.

From what I have read I infer that you do not have a firm handle of what autonomy means. Autonomy does not mean you can do everything yourself as you seem to think. It means that you are at liberty to shape your life freely and you should be able to do so within the confines that you do not compromise the autonomy of others. So yes, if I want a wife and kids I am dependent on someone willing to marry me and procreate with me. I might not find her. However, I am free to pursue that aim. That is autonomy. It pertains to this situation 'in casu' as follows: I should be free to decide for myself the way I will die. Willing others who assist me should not be prevented from doing so because the state should not impinge on my choice unless there is a more pressing moral concern. There are some I think, as I outlined above, that is why judicious regulation is necessary. My autonomy still carries a lot of weight though. The default is not that I am no autonomous choosing individual, delivered to the will of the collective. The default is that I am. You are a closet totalitarian Andrew.

But they have done that. — Andrew4Handel

Probably. People also have murdered others in the Netherlands. That does not mean Dutch laws on murder and manslaughter do not function. People have also driven their car without a license god forbid. Proves nothing.

I think people have failed to defend the notion of autonomy. — Andrew4Handel

Because tou say so, nice.

The people who have the most autonomy are the people with the most interventions and assistance and the most access to resources.

It is not a Natural state. We are not created through or with our autonomy. We are unable to care for ourselves for several years so cannot rely on our autonomy as we are reliant on parents and other adults. — Andrew4Handel

You are confusing principle with practice. No one is purely autonomous. However, treating people as means to an end as Kant would have it requires that we treat people as autonomous authors of their lives. That people need each other does not mean that one can make decisions for them. Sure I am reliant on my parents up until a certain age, however when I am 'of legal age', I can decide for myself how long I stay out at night.

If we have a desire to be a doctor or pilot etc we need pre-existing societies structures like scientific institues, roads, money and welfare systems. The more of these societally created tools the more we can fulfil our desires. There are few desires we can fulfill if left alone in the wild. So we are in something of a social contract where we are provided services due to cooperation and giving up some freedoms for others. — Andrew4Handel

Excactly, well according to social contract theory, but that matter is best left to another threat.

Assisted suicide is being pushed by people who are already privileged have increased autonomy given by others through societal innovation and support not the truly disenfranchised who have been the biggest victims of euthanasia and have lives determined unworthy. — Andrew4Handel

Where is that sort of thing taking place and who is advocating for state sponsored murder? Euthanasia does not mean the state gets to decide to kill you. It means the patient gets to decide, within certain legal limits and subject to procedures designed to make sure utmost care is being taken by the practicing physicians, to end their lives aided by others, provided the physician that does so is also willing and in agreement.

Lack of desire to live can often be associated with and induced by helplessness, learned helpless and disenfranchisement and that was my experience of feeling suicidal. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, by all kinds of things, including intolerable and endless suffering.

Feeling pushed to die by suffering or fear of is an experience of coercion. — Andrew4Handel

Yes and we should be very weary and take the utmost care that it does not become subject to coercion. However is it a good argument to ban the practice altogether? Is that a proportionate measure to that threat or should it be regulated in a way that makes sure people remain uncoerced? In the Netherlands where we have such laws, pysicians will not just put you down (at least they should not lest they commit manslaughter) because you have lost the will to live.

The only real difference is optimism vs pessimism. I think we'll run out of time, resources and options before the [relatively; numerically] insignificant matter of suicide, assisted and otherwise, can be addressed in any systematic way. I think far bigger and more urgent matters will take up all our attention and efforts... — Vera Mont

Sure, but there is always a bigger problem to address.

... until the final collapse of our civilization. Many civilizations have collapsed before, and I'm pretty sure their comfortable middle classes also refused to contemplate the possibility that their own could go the same way. What comes after is open to interesting speculation. — Vera Mont

Possibly. But why then write about anything? I think we are in a unique position to recapture lost ground.
That, once, our civilisation too will collapse is a given. We are like the old Norwegian Gods. They knew ragnarok would come but they saw it as their duty to postpone it as long as possible.

But you can imagine it: government that puts the needs interests of the citizens before those of its military or financial or religious or political elite, designs policy, enacts legislation and allocates funds with those priorities. — Vera Mont

I am not certain that many governments do not try to do that. They are however stuck within an interplay of forces including those of very powerful market players. I do not know if it is the government that is the issue, or whether politics is more and more played outside of regular political circles. Politics is conducted in many places. Citizens also seem less interested in having their say in politics. I think therefore the chaleng is a different one, how to make politics more participatory and accessible especially for people who are not often heard.

It's not a question of how much we value life in general; it increasingly and inevitable becomes a question of how many can be preserved at all. — Vera Mont

It is a matter of how much we value preserving everyone and how hard we are willing to try and of course what to sacrifice for doing so.

I started this thread with examples including a 44 year old and 24 year old who had assisted suicides for mental health reasons not terminal illness and whose lives were shortened considerably. How is that valuing human life? — Andrew4Handel

Well if their suffering was uncurable who are you to say they should live? Your premise is simply that mental illness is no good ground for euthanasia, but it may well be. If one suffers unbearably and incurably. You question the doctors who have conducted the diagnosis, but you have no credentials to credibly make such claims.

No you are throwing millions under the bus and the integrity of the health and care systems and the value of life due to your desire to have someone help kill you — Andrew4Handel

The onus is on you to show that a health care system that provides for euthanasia is less caring than one that does not. Doctors, who deeply care for their patients generally perform euthanasia out of care for that patient and his or her suffering.

I have already provided evidence of who is being affected by assisted suicide such as the poor, the lonely and victims of abuse from others. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, being a victim of abuse may lead to terminal and unbearable suffering. That is terribly sad, but is it any better to be a victim from abuse, suffer immensely and being denied a way out? The problem is you treat the issue in an unsophisticated way, there is only right or wrong. Of course unbearable suffering is wrong and yes, it is always sad if a life is ended on request. The question is what regulatory regime leads to the least amount of suffering, while keeping basic human rights and fairness intact.

You want a law that effects everyone because of a personal preference. And you fail to comprehend the vulnerability of people who don't want an assisted suicide under your legal system. — Andrew4Handel

No Andrew, you want that. Forced assisted suicide is a contradiction in terms. The law which we have created is outlawing it. We have right now a law that affects (not effects) everyone. Having that law is not the default state, it is the product of a regulatory choice.

There are quick accessible ways to potentially painlessly kill yourself if you are able bodied. — Andrew4Handel

The problem is that those who needs assistance generally are not.

Several of the most prominent terminally ill assisted suicide campaigners died peacefully and or quickly in the end — Andrew4Handel

So? What does this, or any anecdotal evidence you provide have to do with the issue at hand?

I can cite several more if needs be — Andrew4Handel

Yes yes yes, we need more because it makes your argument so much, like, stronger. Who cares how campaigners for assisted suicide die?

Would the thought everything exists except me qualify as a delusion? — Agent Smith

The point of the cogito is that that is a contradictory position. If you state that something, whatever it is, exists, than the substance making that statement has to exist as well. We immediately come up against the 'I' stating it. It does not necessarily have to be an 'I' with all the features we commonly attach to it, but there is 'thinking substance', res cogintans.

Not everyone has an accommodating Germany next door. And what, when all the well-prepared nations need the capacity for their own critically ill - who will take the extra old and infirm off your hands? — Vera Mont

No, then hard choices need to be made. I have no qualms with that. However, for some that time comes quicker than for others. It is odd that the Netherlands being an equally rich country as Germany is, has less ICU capacity. That has to do with political choices and might well have to do with the sanctity for human life ingrained in the past WW2 generations of Germans. I feel we have an odd debate because I feel we are in agreement, but you are not agreeing with me :lol:

So is climate change, but knowing that doesn't alleviate the present problem or mitigate the much larger future problem or increase the available resources for whenever the polity is ready to throw out the bums and install a civic-minded, smart administration. With every hurricane and coastal flooding. more infrastructure is destroyed. How many hospitals did Katrina take out? And she was a pussycat, compared to storms yet to come. — Vera Mont

Well it does not alleviate the present problem but it is an important acknowledgement nonetheless, if only to establish degrees of responsibility. I do not know what a civic minded smart administration is. I doubt though that when we install it, presto, all our problems will be over. I also do not know what kind of different policies such a government would enact. It is easy to complain from outside.

I had alluded to the conservative parties - everywhere, not just in the US - moving rightward, striking down laws for personal autonomy and cutting social programs, including health services.
To which you replied:
Assisted suicide or euthanasia laws may play into that hand, because if we do not have to keep people alive, and it becomes socially not to, we can cut more beds.
— Tobias

By which I assumed you meant liberal governments' permissive suicide laws encourage conservative governments to cut health-care on the pretext that old people will have been killed before they need it.

I contend that this is not a cause-effect situation. — Vera Mont

Well they never say it out loud of course. I also do not think it is a 'cause and effect situation'. I am thinking along the lines of social discourse. Already we see people wanting raise insurance rates for people living 'unhealthily'. We are moving towards a society which, rather akin to the early 20th century, sees mishap as a personal issue. There is a tendency to frown upon looking at the state for aid (except when you are a bank of course...). Euthanasia laws (for all their good intentions) may be coopted into this line of reasoning. 'Do not look at the state to keep you alive, we will only do so when we still see some benefit in it, after all you can pay for it yourself, or choose death....'. If euthanasia comes to be defended on efficiency grounds then I think we have indeed overstepped ethical boundaries. Even though, it is acknowledged, we cannot keep someone alive at excessive costs even if they wanted to. Making it subject to a cost benefit calculation though, is the the other extreme.

I.e. They are not concerned with the value of human life, and never have been; their attitude didn't change when the law was relaxed. — Vera Mont

I tend to agree, but, that said.... well, the religious. conservatives may well be concerned with the value of human life and oppose it on that ground. There is a plethora of conservativisms.

What they are interested in is central, lock-step power, protecting concentrated wealth. — Vera Mont

Yes, conervativism, in its radical variants, tend to place a high amount of value on law and order and on tradition, which opposes change and therefore protects existing imbalances of power.

To which end they wooed and won the religious fundamentalist, the racist, the xenophobic, the economically insecure voter blocs by appropriating their simple, punitive values. — Vera Mont

Yes, in my corner of the world they call this cocktail populism.

I don't know how it came about (other than through the Middle Eastern debacles) in Europe, or how it will play out in each nation. You're in a far better position to see that side and predict what comes next. — Vera Mont

I tend to be careful with prediction but the trend I see is similar and to me similarly worrisome. I do not know though whether it is proper conservativism. Populist parties often couple the law and order values with economic policies that might well be agreeable to the progressive left. Not all, but some parties do. I do also think it is the result of a gap the left has indeed left. The traditional progressive parties have failed to formulate an alternative. They have been implicated in the decrease of the welfare state and the increase of the precariat. They profile themselves on cultural issues which their traditional rank and file does not have time to consider as they are in economic dire straights.

Hardly. Which politician orders up a flood or a snowstorm or a pandemic? Those are realities with which real, live, present-on-the-scene health care, rescue and emergency workers have to deal with. There are too many of those and too few of them. No politician is able to pull a few thousand doctors out of his hat. People with chronic debilitating illness don't have ten or twelve years - it would actually longer - for a new crop of graduates, even if higher were offered without tuition fees immediately. — Vera Mont

It is a political choice how much emergency capacity you entertain. The Netherlands had to send ICU patients to Germany because we did not have enough beds. Germany did. The height of the tuition fees for instance. Lower them and you will have more doctors. Not immediately, so the shortages now are the result of past policy choices. They might have been legitimate, mind you, but it is not as if there were no warnings. We know extreme weather will occur more often, we know that our hyper mobility makes us vulnerable to pandemics etc.

The 'because' doesn't fit. They were already doing it when they themselves legislated against assisted suicide and abortion, against gay rights and birth control, against science education and school lunches, against environmental protection and worker's safety - but for guns, prisons, executions, militarized police and even more tax-cuts.
Not because of erosion of humane values, but because the things they were for required lots of gullible votes and they presented their platform of 'againsts' as the moral choice. — Vera Mont

This will have to be unpacked for me. I am not thinking it is because of erosion of human values we create euthanasia laws... You use a lot of ' it' and ' they', so much so that I have trouble understanding your argument.

As the waves of crisis - influenza, fire, flood, windstorms, blizzards, power outages, road accidents, emotional trauma: more emergencies - keep coming, the resources, notably medical staff and hospital beds, are never replenished, let alone expanded to meet the need; patient backlogs keep building up. — Vera Mont

Yes indeed and those are political choices. Assisted suicide or euthanasia laws may play into that hand, because if we do not have to keep people alive, and it becomes socially not to, we can cut more beds. That was what I was arguing against.

I'm beginning to think the pro suicide people lack values and morals. — Andrew4Handel

Ahhh you are beginning to think, always be wary when that happens. I'd suggest, think again, because you are probably wrong since a whole host of people advocate euthanasia laws and they do so with utmost integrity. That their opinion is different from yours is another matter, but to put them (or us) in the corner of the amoral is simply an insult.

I think killing someone or allowing them to die is at odds with valuing human life and we are not just animals to be put down in a mercy killing or put out of our misery. — Andrew4Handel

Neither should we be irrationally delivered to the power of God who decides when to live or die without us having a say in the matter. Isn't it actually an indication that we hold autonomy in high (perhaps too high) esteem in that we are allowing a choice?

If you have nihilist, spiritless values I think people are entitled to impose value on you because by rejecting value you have no argument they should value your opinions. — Andrew4Handel

Que? I think you have no business calling my values anything. And by no means are you entitled to impose values on me or anyone else. You like to play God that is the problem. No one here says life has no value. Some of us are saying we should have a choice whether to love or die especially in great misery. That is not nihilist, that is putting your faith in individual rationality.

People fought against the Nazis to end the Holocaust. The transatlantic slavery was ended. Apartheid ended. Women got equal rights and so on. We continue fighting not euthanising people because we no longer value life because we have given up on our species. — Andrew4Handel

Of course not. The sentence seems to be incorrect by the way. But no, euthanasia is no indication we have given up on our species, but is an indication that we have moved from a discourse around fate, death and God choosing the time to go, to death being a state which lays in the realm of choice. Now there are good reasons to be wary of such a move and I outlined them, but it is a gross oversimplification to see it as merely giving up on our species.

If someone intends to kill themselves they consider their life has no more value so society does not have responsibility to agree with that, like I said earlier it is not autonym to end your existence which would lead to a state of nonexistence and hence no autonomy. — Andrew4Handel

Autonomy ends with death, but the decision to die is made autonomously. I think that full autonomy discourse is bogus but I also think your logic is flawed. And no, society does not have a duty to facilitate every person's deathwish. That is why the matter needs to be meticulously regulated, not oversimplified like you appear to be doing all the time.

It is absurd to protest against the state keeping you alive. — Andrew4Handel

Why? If the state forces me to be alive contrary to my wishes it is not and in a state of intolerable suffering it is not. That is what criminal law does. The state criminalizes acts of individuals. In this case acts by doctors. Doctors are asked by patients, deeply suffering patient usually to end their lives. They cannot comply because they would face prosecution. As a terminally suffering patient, why would it be absurd to protest against that state of affairs? The doctor by the way has also reason to protest because he or she is forced in a conflict of duties.

Political suicide is an expression of ones values is unethical in my opinion. And bringing in laws that endanger other people to me is unethical. — Andrew4Handel

We are not bringing in laws, we are taking them out. Assisted suicide is criminalized as it is. Intolerable suffering may to some be more dangerous than death.

So, if governments make it illegal to help people die, they will be helped illegally - as before - or stored away somewhere until they die, in whatever conditions, whatever agony - as before. — Vera Mont

My post was actually more directed at Andrew than you, because I feel we are mostly in agreement... I would not advocate criminalizing euthanasia. However, I do advocate regulating it very meticulously as it is an important topic worthy of social debate.

Laws are necessarily made in the abstract. But they're also made within a political and economic framework of what is possible. In a culture strongly influenced by religious factions, certain ideas cannot be considered for legislation - as had been the case with birth control and gay rights. In a debt/profit economy, the source of funding for any proposed legislation determines its viability. — Vera Mont

Well it is certainly true that law is made within a cultural and political setting. Law is a child of its times. I do not think that money is the only source that talks though. There are interesting puzzles in this regard. the lobby power of corporations is much larger than that of the environmental movement and still environmental legislation is strengthened. Not enough for many, but still. Law making is also a popularity contest, it is balancing interests, ideology, there is no one size firs all. I live in a country with liberal euthanasia laws by the way. Here, the subject is regulated by law.

Even the best health care systems are already under severe strain. One more round of the current pandemic will collapse even the most robust. — Vera Mont

Yes and sometimes hard choices need to be made. However, I do side with Andrew when he argues that euthanasia laws may also be a symptom of a careless society. The notion that we do not sacrifice people for the greater good, but we do our utmost to keep them on board is meaningful. I think it is a great good to have a society in which people feel that if they find themselves in great peril, others will come to their aid, including the government. It gives a sence of security and with that allows people to flourish and feel at home. I value that sort of thing.

I am not withholding medicine from anyone I am opposing the legalizing of physician and government assisted suicide because of a wide range of concerns that I have outlined already. I am not advocating prosecuting anyone for assisting a suicide either except on a case by case basis which already occurs in countries with assisted suicide when the suicide is suspect. — Andrew4Handel

Medicine was used metaphorically. I know you are opposing it and I know your concerns and some of them are good. I just question the coherence of your position as both an anti-natalist and arguing against assisted suicide.

I am not advocating prosecuting anyone for assisting a suicide either except on a case by case basis which already occurs in countries with assisted suicide when the suicide is suspect. — Andrew4Handel

Prosecuting on a ' case by case basis' is suspect from a criminal law point of view as there is a danger that prosecution becomes arbitrary. This is against basic principles of criminal law and fair trial. So we need guidelines.

I personally think that once you have created a life you have created a responsibility to make that life flourish. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, but I am thrown into the world, without having been asked. The onus is maybe on my parents, but I might want to end it and there is no argument against that, especially since on your terms the world is such a bad place we should not put people in it.

Most antinatalist are strong supporters of assisted suicide so I am in a minority. I think the only way to avoid suffering is not to create more people, once you have created them suffering is inevitable and assisted suicide often happens because of suffering. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, but why should I suffer? If I want to go, than I go and you should at least understand that since the world is a rotten place on your account. Now, of course it would be great if I could do it myself, but some people can't and need assistance. You seem to hold the view that assisting them is wrong in and of itself, but that position does not seem to be very coherent. You wish to end suffering. Terminating the life of one that suffers may end it.

I an not an antinatalist nor am I uncritical on the issue of assisted suicide. I share some of your concerns. The most strong argument against it, is that ending life becomes an option just like all other options and that it becomes socially accepted to end the life of the sufferer instead of trying to improve it, when costs for doing so are considered excessive. In a day and age where we are fond of measuring, caluclation and efficiency, decriminalizing assisted suicide runs the risk of becoming standard practice because we simply do not want to pay the price for keeping someone alive. I am also critical of the individual autonomy argument. Choices are never made in a vacuum, people exist in networks with others and take those others into account. We should be very wary that people feel they are a burden to others and therefore want to end their lives, especially since the law treats it as ' just another option in the great marketplace'. Those are all concerns that deserve the utmost attention. However, that does not make it wrong in itself to do so, it just means it has to be regulated with utmost care. As Vera said, it has been done for ages, only in secret. Sometimes doctors will be in a conflict of duties, on the one hand to obey the criminal law and on the other to end the suffering of their patient. Such conflicts should not rest on the shoulders of individual doctors.

As for the cases you cite, I think they make your argument weaker so I will not go into them. You do not know the facts of the case, you make unwarranted assumptions that people with a mental illness cannot suffer intolerably etc. In short you have no idea what you are talking about, neither do the others here, neither do I. Even if a mistake is made in an individual case, it says nothing about the underlying principle. Therefor it is best to argue in the abstract.

I do not really understand your argument Andrew. You are an antinatalist, so you must feel the chances of spending life suffering is bigger than the chance of becoming happy. Why then, would you withhold the medicine to end the suffering for someone so unlucky as to have been born, just because others are needed to administer it? Your position simply seems cruel by your own lights.

I agree that we have to look at assisted suicide or euthanasia laws very closely and that it is an ethical issue worthy of the deep societal debate they have caused. I also agree with some of your arguments, but I question the coherence of your position as a whole.

I like the thought experiment, it is good. Sure you are the God of love and sex, but you would not be seen, unnoticed. You are forever behind the scenes and eventually forgotten. In the second choice you are all that exists, forever in the minds of other and loved, but no one else is seen or loved. You have become, in a philosophical term, actually. Vera is right, both choices are equally crappy, but why?

In choice one you have become nothingness, the simple backdrop for all there is. In 2, you have become pure being, encompassing all and everything. In both instances you have lost who you are, a limited being, a one among many, a certain something. You In scenario 1 you cannot be loved, for all purposes you do not exist and you are alone. You have lost all autonomy vis a vis others, because they cannot know who you are. Your efforts will be only valuable to you. In scenario 2 you equally lost autonomy, because you can never be other than you are. You can never be 'un-loved' no matter how hard you try. That shows something. We are who we are by the grace of being a concrete, bounded other. Robbing one of autonomy means robbing one of concrete existence. You become a mere object, a non-existing object, or an all encpompassing object, but never a subject. So we are subject by the grace of becoming. By becoming other than we are, loved sometimes, unloved at others, we realize our subjectivity.

It is extreme to go against the current wide spread acceptance of private property. — Andrew4Handel

Why? Once it was extreme going against the widely held belief in God or witches... Once it was considered extreme to think that homosexuality should not be outlawed....

By extreme I did not mean incorrect but making claims that would challenge norms or suggest we need to change our views or action radically. — Andrew4Handel

By that light indeed, many philosophical positions are extreme or lead to extreme consequences. Peter Singer's utilitarianism comes to mind or Nozick's proviso in his libertarianism.

\

I think nihilism makes the meaning of philosophy fail. We accept certain meanings to communicate. — Andrew4Handel

Is there anyone that really held such a view? I think certain philosophical positions are incoherent. I do not think they are 'extreme', just incoherent.

Philosophy attempting to make things intelligible or does it have no boundaries on what position is reached or defended? — Andrew4Handel

Of course it has no boundaries. Where would they come from, philosophy, no? Also I find thee list odd. why is private property any less extreme then the idea of not having private property?

No doubt there's entanglement, but I'm unaware of any replacement. To me we should distinguish carefully between calling out hypocrisy and attacking rationality and science itself (presumably in the name of something tribal or esoteric?). — Pie

Well, here you make the assumption that law is a science. To the German mind it is, to the British it is not... the rule "water cooks at 100 degrees celsius" is ddifferent from "rivers ought to hold to the right side of the road".

In my view, there's no need to cling to the sacredness of private property, for instance, if we want to maintain individual freedom. No particular, frozen understanding of freedom is sacred. I understand our current notions of freedom ( and of rationality) to allow for an internal critique that allows for their modification. We inherit the norms that govern their modification, and we pass those modified norms on. Repeat. Note that this means Enlightenment rationality is not static, and I refer to it as a handy starting point, though one could also go back to Socrates and Democritus. — Pie

I am not necessarily disagreeing, but currently this whole philosophical tradition is under attack. If I do take a marxist tack, the division of property rights is crucial to the way we think. So for a materialist this idealist tradition is an accomplice to a tradition of oppression. I am not saying they are necessarily right, but they are more en vogue than Hegelian idealism.

As Brandom might put, how are autonomous humans, who now live beyond God, supposed to have binding norms which we ourselves reserve the right to change ? To what degree does this require or imply a story or stories of progress? — Pie

This is a very good question, central to the philosophy of law. I do think that indeed we must have something of a shared story a like mindedness when it comes to justice. However, I wonder if Hegel's is not too much of a good thing, too thick. Well, perhaps not, but subscribing to it means having to bite the bullet: contra sophisticated thinkers about human rights such as Makau Mutua you would have to hold that the western inddividualistic tradition in which freedom means individual freedom, is in fact universal and more collectivistic accounts inherently despotic. I am not wishing to bite that bullet yet.

I think of us as having a second order tradition of stories, some of them about physics and biology and others about rights and rationality. Then there are philosophical stories that are largely about stories themselves and the dominant role they play for creatures like us. This tradition is second order to the degree that no story is sacred or final, excepting perhaps the meta-story or attitude toward stories that we might call Enlightenment rationality. — Pie

I agree with you but indeed you would have to place your bets on 'enlightenment rationality' which brings you into conflict with post colonial and feminist scholars who argue that enlightenment rationality is steeped in colonial history and its accomplice.

Notice that Karl Marx went on to practise this form of dialectic, by negating Hegel's fundamental principle. Marx negated Hegel's proposal of "the Idea" as the basis of human existence in the social setting, and replaced it with "matter" as the kernel, or foundation of human existence in the social setting. From this perspective, the purpose of the state is to provide for the material needs of the individuals, rather than the Hegelian perspective, which places the purpose of the state as to provide for the Idea to know itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed and that, comically enough, Marx shares with neo-liberal exconomists. Through Marx on the one hand and Adam Smith on the other, matter and material became the dominant idea and replaced it. Leading to our current anti-metaphysical times....
We are all material girls now... (It is a very clever song by the way, a very good description of the 1980's containing some biting irony)

I am hesitant to endorse Hegels writing on history. It is purely speculative in the sense that with Hegel's dialectic in hand I could write a completely different 'history', for instance the awakening of spirit as only currently upon us by the realization of minorities and marginalized communities how they have been subjugated and demanding their place in history... That such is possible though shows something about the nature of dialectic, something that is more idealistic than realistic.

Dialectic is a kind of logic, though not a logic in the traditional sense, but a logic nonetheless. It is a 'logic' because it is a formalization of the way we think about the world and therefore the only way the world can 'be'. That is why Hegel is according to me an idealist. We cannot escape to think of the world dialectically.

Dialectic is a dynamic way of thinking and therefore prone to become historicized. The articulation of the dialectic also emerges historically in the history of philosophy. History was always dialectical, but in history its abstract articulation emerged. I though Hegel over emphasized this historicity and cut out or did not know earlier examples of dialectical thinking, such as the Tao te Ching. It would laos have upset his neatly organized dialectical world history, but I digress.

Dialectic is a way in which we conceive of the world, the way in which we make sense of it. Hegel did not use the thesis anti thesis and synthesis scheme. He describes it as thesis, negation and negation of the negation. It is important because synthesis alludes to some kind of unity, but Hegel is reluctant to speak of unities. Rather fault lines remain within the new position that can accommodate both the original position as its negation. The synthesis is itself not at rest, it is a continuous thread of negations, because the new position is not as such a new position, but something that engenders its own negation yet again albeit on a higher level. It is a kind of spiral of negations.

Now because it is a logic, an inescapable way of thinking about the world, we see the dialectic at work in every theory we conceive. Take for instance the theory of evolution. A species emerges, but finds itself in hostile conditions, (negation) it adapts to those conditions, negating the negation, but in so doing encounters other problems, negations and adapts again and so on. It develops and diversifies, increasing its complexity through this constant flow of negations. It develops into species, but also eco systems in which both hunter and prey need to coexist even though they feed on each other.

Also look inside yourself and tell the story of your own life. You came into this world, accepted what your parents told you, but learned thinks were different through opposition by other and you adopted a different opinion and different behavior, but that itself became subject to challenges when you grew up, you fell in love, learned about the other, broke up, it enriched your understanding of who you are without reaching any definite end point, or said differently, the end point is yourself as you are now, the product of all these encounters. Everything can be analyzed dialectically. It is fruitless to try to find empirical evidence for the dialectic, as fruitless as it is to ask for empirical proof of the law of identity.

4. 1. is false. (RAA) — unenlightened

It is indeed as simple as that.

As I understand it, it is the state of being of the virtuous person that is actualized. This is the case whether one acts on that knowledge or not. But yes, it would be wrong to consider virtue in the absence of action. — Fooloso4

Yes, but the virtue would be entirely without consequence if you would not act on it and that seems wasteful. Being wasteful hardly seems virtuous. A soldier who knows what to do and acts on it, seems to me more worthy than a soldier who knows what to do but stays passive.

I might do something considered virtuous but that does not make me virtuous. My reason for doing it might have nothing to do with virtue. — Fooloso4

Yes, Kant made a similar point centuries later and it is a point well taken. However, I think we should be watchful to make virtue entirely subjective, in the sense of a quality of the subject. It threatens to overburden the subjective side and we will only be able to judge actors and not acts. To me the attraction of virtue ethics rests in the reciprocal or perhaps dialectical relation. The virtuous person is virtuous because he displays virtue, he acts.In the action the virtue is highlighted. Without knowledge of course the act is random, but without action knowledge is pointless.

One must be in the proper state, be a beautiful soul, in order to perceive the beauty of things as they are. More specifically, to know that these choices and actions are beautiful and those ugly. — Fooloso4

Yes, but from that follows that knowledge as perceiving is not enough for virtue because this knowledge is only actualized in action, no? Actually what I get from the article is that virtue only arises in action. A further assumption must be made to make the claim that knowledge by itself is (a) virtue sound, that is that a knowledgable person will also act upon that knowledge. That to me seems a shaky assumption though, though might well be one made by Ari.

Yes, but is this doing applied to the act of knowing only, or, and that was Hello Human's point I guess, is knowing, even as an act of knowing, not enough, and is virtue displayed in practical situations that do not only involve knowing? A courageous soldier knows the right man, but also acts upon this knowledge. That knowledge itself is also an action, does not answer this question.

I imagine from there we can generalize and conclude that there is more to virtuous action than knowledge. So it seems virtue is not equal to knowledge.

And now we have also distinguished between wisdom and knowledge. So it seems the conclusion for now is: wisdom is equivalent to virtue but not equivalent to knowledge. — Hello Human

I think this all is correct...

The right thing to do is indeed to get rid of the phobia, but is knowing that you must get rid of it sufficient to get rid of it, or are there other factors other than knowledge at play ? — Hello Human

Something Aristotle called practical wisdom. Knowing is not enough because unless one acts one does not get rid of the phobia. So it is a composition of action and knowledge, or in Aristotelian terms actualized knowledge